Wander was probably the first computer game that is recognisable as what came to be known as a “text adventure” (or “interactive fiction”) – pre-dating even ADVENT (a.k.a. Colossal Cave) by Crowther and Woods!

Once it was determined which games would be produced, the blueprints were allegedly sent to military factories that primarily made electronics used in nuclear testing and weapons. These were perhaps the only places in the USSR that had the manpower and the means to understand the engineering required to build the arcade games.

Code 7 is a neat sci fi interactive fiction thing. The link goes to their itch.io page where the first chapter/demo is available for pay what you want (including free). The remainder of it is still in development as far as I can tell (they've been approved on Steam Greenlight)

"The more I watched my friends playing WoW, the more I got thinking about how curiously similar the that Azeroth (as the world in WoW is called) was both the most technologically advanced virtual world to date and almost totally designed to look like images shot on ancient cameras carried up mountains by donkeys."

I have killed three dogs in Minecraft. The way to get a dog is to find a wolf, and then feed bones to the wolf until red Valentine’s hearts blossom forth from the wolf, and then it is your dog. It will do its best to follow you wherever you go, and (like a real dog) it will invariably get in your way when you are trying to build something. ... I felt bad each time, while of course fully realizing that only virtual entities were being killed. Surely some of the sorrow I felt was imported from the real world, where I am fond of dogs and do what I can to avoid drowning or burning them. I could not be said to have developed a meaningful relationship with my virtual dogs, but I was pleased to see them each time they caught up with me, and I was a little sad to realize they wouldn’t be getting in my way anymore. I think I was right to feel at least a little bit bad about killing them.

A Red Flag for Greenlight "There's a fervent ideological belief at work [in Valve's Greenlight program], one which says that the most open system is the best system... It's a very pure vision. It's also not one that works very well."

The pedagogy of simulation games — city simulators in particular — is worth meditating on. They are, ostensibly, about engaging with complex (though still incredibly simplified) models, coupled with rule sets that mark discrete goals. These range from the practicable (make sure there are water lines in your new residential zone so the houses can have plumbing) to the whimsical (call down an alien invasion). By being told to use a set of tools in a particular way, an individual can be taught how to engage with a system — the system that is the game.

GLaDOS and The Sniper: A Voice Acting Love Story Ellen McLain, the voice behind the murderous artificial intelligence GLaDOS from the Portal series, and her husband, John Patrick Lowrie, who voices The Sni​per from the game Team Fortress 2, are nothing if not adorable.

2015's Game Developers Conference featured many people talking and talking about things. Gamey things. Now you can watch hundreds of those talks for free from the comfort of your own seat (assuming that you are sitting right this minute, which may be presumptuous).

GamerGate is killing video games. "There are a number of us in academia who love games, care about games, and believe games are important. We have been working for years to make games a legitimate tool for education and for study, and we were making progress. People were starting to take games seriously. And then came GamerGate. I have seen the careful progress of a decade come crashing down, and now, when I go to talk about games to industry groups or fellow academics, GamerGate always comes up as an example of how terrible and immature people who play games are. It will take years and years to repair the damage, and it is absolutely devastating to the serious study and application of the power of games to real problems. We are going to have trouble getting grants, getting foundations to fund games, and getting people to take us seriously. It is devastating and makes me very sad."

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